


A Dream of Red

by ChocoChipBiscuit



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, Food, Oral Sex, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-05 06:41:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10299980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoChipBiscuit/pseuds/ChocoChipBiscuit
Summary: Morrigan: dreams, hungers, and Leliana.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lecriteuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lecriteuse/gifts).



> Many, many thanks to my fantastic betas, Stonestrewn and ialpiriel, who cheered me on and brought out more depth and nuance than I could have possibly done on my own. :)

Morrigan dreams in red, red silk stitched through the fabric of her skin, long skeins of swirling thought and ambiguous intentions. She shines sickle-moon smiles in the court of Serault, belly swelling full and round until she gives birth to her child, her little pomegranate seed made flesh, the fruit of her mother’s plans and her own ambitions and repaid kindness. To give life to prevent another’s death has a certain pleasing symmetry to it, like a mirror flipped so that past, present, future all appear to spin in a dizzying whirl of glitter and glass.

So it neither shocks nor surprises her to see Leliana in the Orlesian court. She knows well the shape of that mouth, Leliana’s red-cheeked smile and her pale nails. Morrigan very much doubts that Leliana is unaware of her presence either, but still— formalities must be observed, entrances must be made. Morrigan descends the stairs wearing the gown of deep red velvet, the gold embroidery glimmering rich against the fabric. As long-ago advised, her hair is pinned up, her neckline low, her throat encircled in a bejewelled collar. And while Morrigan does not seek Leliana’s approval, there is satisfaction in seeing that subtle arch of the other woman’s eyebrow, the dimples flashing to the surface like trout in a shallow lake.

Morrigan joins the Inquisition, and her dreams turn to stained-glass hungers, fire and smoke. When she first met Leliana, they were equals— the apostate witch of the wilds, the lay Chantry sister. They have met again as equals— arcane advisor to the Inquisition, and the spymaster of the same. A decade between them, old arguments tempered by years. Morrigan has learnt subtlety, misdirection through spoken word; Leliana has learnt flight, and feathers, and messages best carried by nonhuman skins.

If, on occasion, Morrigan escapes the bounds of human form and appears in the rookery as one more raven amongst the many, Leliana treats her no differently from the others. A knowing glint, a subtle nod of acknowledgment, and they preserve this fragile peace. A silent detente.

They plant their silences. After quiet hours, weeks, Morrigan slips to the rookery on two feet rather than wings. They harvest small conversations.

Leliana speaks of missives and scouts, shadowed years spent as the Left Hand of the Divine. A ruthless accounting writ in bloody ink.

Morrigan speaks of the roads she’s travelled, an unspooled thread that runs from secret woods to highest court. She speaks of Kieran’s obedience and the lessons he’s learned.

(She does not speak of the mistakes she’s refused to repeat, Flemeth’s lessons still lingering in her blood.)

She takes advantage of the Inquisition’s resources to revel in small luxuries, sweet pleasures that gasp painful; like a too-hot bath before the steam dissipates to tepid water, her skin scented with sweat and roses. But not all desires can be so easily scrubbed away, leaving her with this simmering caldera of emotion, painful pasts and careful futures, all braided through as Leliana holds daggers where Morrigan once spoke knives.

Morrigan sets Kieran loose in the Inquisition’s garden, and examines the herbs. The Inquisitor has an eye to practicality and at least one talented herbalist-mage in her employ, the potted plants all neatly domesticated to piles of glossy green foliage and white blossoms and gnarled roots, each according to their use. There is still one section reserved for ornamentals, three small pots that overflow with sweet-scented Andraste’s Grace. It stirs a distant recollection, and when Leliana appears at her elbow, like the very shadow of a ghost, Morrigan is ready.

“Nightingale, is it?” Feathered words, soft and layered with intention. An arch of her brow makes the jest clear.

“Some call me that,” Leliana says easily. Her face is milk-pale, soft lines around her eyes and a certain hardness to her mouth. Age suits her, Morrigan supposes. Better than a martyrdom.

Morrigan bares her teeth, something kin to a smile. “How dramatic.”

Leliana chuckles, her hood casting shadow across her face. “I did slay a dragon for you.” Her smile stretches, bright and gleaming.

Morrigan sniffs. “Do not presume so much credit. You did so at the Warden’s behest. And with aid.”

Leliana rolls her palms up and gives a playful half-shrug. “We are friends, no? I am happy to share said credit.”

Old taunts, old arguments, like withered weeds from bitter soil. Morrigan cannot stop herself, brandishing her thorns against intimacy. “Spoken like a foolish girl.”

“Better foolish than lonely.”

Leliana’s words hang between them; sour fruit weighing on the vine.

The silence could shatter teeth.

Morrigan bites her breath, lungs ready with violence, but Leliana speaks first.

“Your dress was magnificent. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

A peace offering; not a victory, but an armistice.

Morrigan shapes her words from cruelty to confession. “I did think of you, at times.”

Leliana chuckles, and it’s as if a gossamer shroud has lifted, allowing them to both breathe freely again. “They say that properly dressing a woman is as intimate as making love with her.” She smirks, hovering her fingers scant inches from Morrigan’s elbow, close enough that her heat tingles Morrigan’s skin even as her shadow casts chill. “But I cannot imagine you allowing such liberties.”

“Perhaps I have never been properly dressed.”

Leliana’s eyes glint, diamond-sharp and glittering. “Perhaps. We still have not gone shopping together, after all.”

. . .

After the Temple of Mythal, after drinking from the Well, Morrigan’s dreams turn to red hunger. Red planks of fresh tuna washed from the sea, tiny poppy cakes dusted with saffron, sun-drenched tomatoes bursting with summer promise. She and Leliana eat apples in the rookery, the skin breaking beneath her teeth, all red gloss and white flesh, fresh and new-exposed.

The Well of Sorrows speaks to her in many voices, whispers from bygone ages and shadowed possibilities of what will be, what might be, what has already happened and is beyond repair. She sifts among their many truths and ancient nuance in search of something greater than truth alone: _clarity_.

When Morrigan mentions this to Leliana, Leliana laughs. A wan and tattered thing, threadbare in places, much unlike what had seemed an impossible spill of song and humor back when they were little more than vagabonds.

“It is not unlike being a spymaster, then,” Leliana says. Her smile hides darkness, the way a candle masks its own shadow.

Morrigan scoffs, though her venom has long faded. “To gather truth from multiple sources? I am a living archive, a repository of ancient knowledge.” She leans against the railing of the rookery, the room silent but for the rustle of feathers and quills on parchment. From below, she fancies she can catch the faint smell of parchment and dry vellum, the pungence of library glue and warm leather.

“Even archives benefit from exchange with other libraries.” Leliana leans against the railing next to her, close enough to feel the warmth of her presence even though they do not touch. “We can acquire texts for you, if that would be useful. Madame Vivienne’s contacts are extensive.”

“That Circle-bred mage?”

“You may not like her, but you _must_ respect her.” Her voice is unbroken iron, her eyes cool. “You may have held different positions, but neither would have meant more than court jester, had she not shaped the way.” And before Morrigan can do more than mouth half-formed imprecations, Leliana shifts topics. “After Wynne, I would have thought you less dismissive of ‘Circle-bred mages.’”

“The Circles are a cage made from fear.”

“And in all the time we have known one another, have you never known fear?”

It is bait, a fragrant trap.

Morrigan chooses not to respond, instead plucking a caramel from Leliana’s half-hidden box of sweets. It is a succulent thing, pink salt cutting through the sweetness.

Her tongue lingers with copper and distant volcanoes.

. . .

Morrigan emerges from the mirror clutching Kieran in a ferocity of love, her hands turned to white claws and her voice savage, her very bones a wind-rattle of howling confusion and loss and betrayal, _betrayal_ , and this love could be a devouring thing, but she still remembers Flemeth’s lessons, Flemeth who was her mother, Flemeth who was Mythal, Flemeth who was Mythal claiming to seek a justice denied to her even as she used barbed words and bloody lessons and sent her own child into the Wilds to hide from templars, then to lure them, who broke a child’s mirror for the sake of harsh truth—

Morrigan dreams bloody dreams, nightmares of ripping Kieran asunder, limb from limb, devouring him in a frenzy of love and terror and not counting him safe until his last crimson scraps are down her throat. Protecting him within her belly just as she had when he was little more than a pomegranate seed. She wakes from those dreams sweating, shaking, clutches her knees and presses her cheek against the wall and goes to his bed to check on him, but dares not clutch him close lest her dreams become prophecy.

So Morrigan emerges from her chambers, wandering Skyhold in heavy slippers and a thick cloak. She is a roving flame, a cinder without purpose. Her feet shape their own path to the rookery, though it is so late it has become early, drawn by the solitude and sacred certainty: she will have company there.

Leliana has conferred with the Inquisitor, of course. Who may or may not have given all the details of what has happened, who may not _understand_ — because motherhood is so many things, woven of wire and regret and memories upon memories, something mired in blood and hope and desperation. To say ‘that is my mother’ cannot encapsulate the horror of all that woman was, or reveal the hooks still tethered in her flesh.

“The hour is late,” Morrigan says. A preamble of sorts, the words hoarse razors up her throat.

“So it is.”

And Leliana— Leliana who had fired arrows at the dragon that was Flemeth, who had lost her own mother young, who had dreamt Morrigan into red velvet and finery long before they ever had opportunity to shop— folds her into her arms without question. Under her once-incessant chatter she knows the value of silence, holds all judgment as Morrigan pushes the words past her lips, stained-glass sharp.

Morrigan shivers with the force of it, this unaccustomed intimacy and all the ways they’ve sparked and clashed, like serrated blades catching on one another.

“We killed her once. We could always do it again,” Leliana says, and there is a lightness to her voice— almost enough to mask the deadly promise beneath those words.

“It would not be so easy a second time.” Morrigan shudders. “She claimed I was never in danger from her, that a soul cannot be forced on the unwilling— but she has always claimed I was her creature, her child, sculpted to her desires. Even my desire to preserve the ancient powers of this world was by her choosing. And I— cannot disagree.”

Truth is not the end, but a beginning— so Morrigan thought, so Flemeth said, and so their lives are laid out like an exquisite corpse, some final design for which Morrigan can only begin to see the shape. And she fears that shape is a cage.

. . .

But then there is no room for thoughts of cages, only the utter bewildered desperation of those final hours against Corypheus. He wields an ancient power, dark roots and gnarled force, but Flemeth’s runs deeper, darker, bloodier, anchored in generations of daughters and harkening back to powers who were already ancient when Corypheus was young.

Morrigan becomes a dragon— _is_ a dragon— a living dream of fire and smoke, a bellyful of inferno and lightning in her blood. She grounds Corypheus’ dragon, then crawls to a corner of the battlefield to turn back and lick her wounds, to become the scrap of woman she is, was, must be again. The dwarf scout sets a blanket across her shoulders, her face pale marble beneath her freckles, and Leliana offers a skin of honeyed wine with cold-numb hands. Morrigan drinks gratefully from Leliana’s own hands, sweeter than mother’s milk, as if it can chase the chill from her lead-lined bones.

Morrigan has neither the will nor the words to say anything until after, when they’re in the courtyard and see the Inquisitor— laughing! Exultant!— return with her arms around Cassandra and Sera, the indomitable Vivienne a few decorous steps beyond such vulgar displays of affection, but no less a part of their camaraderie.

Their eyes meet, a moment’s lock as Morrigan assesses their differences. Vivienne wears her armored regalia of the Knight Enchanter, her bladed staff glittering with runes; Morrigan wears the modified garments of her apostate days, her bedraggled hair pasted to her face. They have both saved the world, now.

Morrigan nods.

Vivienne smiles, though it could just as well be a flicker of the light. She has never needed Morrigan’s approval.

Morrigan trusts no one else to bind her wounds or set them, resists the healers touching her with such familiarity, but she submits to Leliana’s gentle hands in her dark quarters, distant from the celebrations. Kieran has run to play with the other children and will return later, his belly bursting with sweets, his breath sweet with milk, but for now Morrigan will tend her own needs.

Leliana gives her lyrium, and Morrigan retraces Wynne’s lessons to heal her own wounds, to knit her flesh hale and whole once more. The old woman had once declared Morrigan would die alone and unmourned, yet taught her anyway. And unlike Flemeth’s lessons, Morrigan wears no scars from her tutelage.

“Will you be leaving us again?” Leliana asks, and it is an old question made new, her hand on Morrigan’s shoulder as if once more they can be stitched together with fine threads of uncertainty.

Morrigan hates questions that have no answer.

“I do not know,” she says, honest as she knows how. “With Corypheus gone, the Inquisitor has no further need of me. I have no desire to return to the Empress’ pretty bauble of a court. And my mother has given me no further instruction.”

“There are ancient magics still worth preserving. The Inquisitor has uncovered ruins and artifacts that may be of interest to you. And Varric has sent for a friend who may be worth meeting, an elven apostate from Kirkwall. You could do far worse than stay here.”

Cages in cages— chains forged from her own mistakes and others’ obligations. Morrigan had thought herself free of all this.

“I have no purpose here.”

“Do you have purpose elsewhere, then?”

Morrigan snorts, bundling her blankets about herself. She supposes she should return the borrowed blanket to that freckled scout, but that can wait for the morning. And judging from the heated looks exchanged at the feast, that same scout is more likely to be busy with the maul-wielding mercenary.

“It would be nice to have an old friend here,” Leliana says, voice soft. Wistful, as if the years have been little more than a series of bad dreams, as if a decade later they aren’t in bodies with new lines and softnesses, as if they both have not been embroiled in their own schemes and machinations that brought them where they are. Such is life.

Morrigan manages a hoarse-bird laugh. “But you do have friends. That Antivan ambassador is _most_ delightful.”

“She is. In fact, she would be delighted if you would finally accept one of her invitations to tea.” Leliana smiles, teeth gleaming. “She is always sure to have small sweets and biscuits for Kieran. And you are a most intriguing creature, as you well know.”

And this may well be another cage, but at least Morrigan has the key.

. . .

Morrigan makes no promises, keeps no counsel, but she makes use of the Inquisitor’s magnificent library and attends Josephine’s luncheons. She studies Josephine’s elaborate tea ceremonies with the meticulous eye of an anthropologist: the many tiny sandwiches with the crusts cut off, the floral macarons and the tea brewed and poured with a complicated timing of water boiled just-so and allowed to steep for a prescribed amount of time before being poured in a musical stream. Josephine finishes by using silver tongs to drop dainty cubes of sugar into the small cups.

Truly, Morrigan suspects Josephine is performing ceremony for the sake of spectacle, something that still leaves Kieran in wide-eyed wonder despite their time at the Orlesian court.

Morrigan’s dreams turn warm and content; rich red teas thick with spice and honey, dry biscuits flavored with anise, dripping sunsets that paint the sky like ripe fruit. She and Leliana come together slowly, naturally, all their shared history and tangled roots twining them ever closer. So it feels like no surprise, but rather a culmination, when at last Morrigan and Leliana sit together in Leliana’s cloistered quarters, their knees bumping on the edge of the bed, and Morrigan laughs as Leliana’s hands fold into hers.

Impossible to say who makes the first move, as impossible as detangling this entwined tapestry of their lives, or to draw out sugar from tea or honey from wine. Later they will agree on the sequence of events— a dip in the bed, Leliana’s hand on Morrigan’s thigh, Morrigan’s arm on Leliana’s shoulders, their lips meeting warm and soft— while still disputing the cause; did Morrigan shift closer, thus dipping Leliana into her? Did Leliana bump Morrigan so that Morrigan had no choice but to raise her arm lest it be crushed between their bodies? But it’s a fool’s game to argue cause and effect when they meet in this slow and gentle wandering, a peace that Morrigan would have scoffed at their first meeting in Lothering.

“Ten years has been too long,” Leliana murmurs.

“We were growing into who we are.”

Leliana undresses her slowly, palms cool against Morrigan’s belly as she unwraps her scant layers. Her nails are smooth and polished, a far cry from their vagabond days in Denerim, her fingers tracing the silver ripples of Morrigan’s pregnancy. Morrigan’s thighs are fuller and her areolas darker than they had once been, when they’d exchanged casual glances while changing or bathing in the limited quarters of the camp, and Leliana explores with reverential wonder. She presses her lips to the hollow of Morrigan’s throat, then between her breasts, cheek against Morrigan’s belly as she washes her tongue over the navel, the dip of the hip, her mouth questing downward.

From here Morrigan can pull back Leliana’s hood, see the top of her scalp— a few silver threads in that fine red hair, and she laughs with the sudden realization of it, like thunder from a cloudless sky as she pushes herself onto her elbows. “Vanity! Of all the reasons to wear that abominable hood!”

Leliana chuckles, rising to lick Morrigan’s breast. “As if your apostate caps had so much to commend them,” Leliana replies, as dignified as she can with Morrigan’s nipple between her teeth, her breath hot against Morrigan’s skin. 

They can devolve into bickering, as they have so many times before, but Morrigan savors this heat between them, the summer storm in their veins. So instead she twists her hand into Leliana’s hair, pulling her up in a clash of lips and teeth, their noses bumping before Leliana twists sideways, and they tumble back onto the bed with a soft _paf_ of impact on the mattress. Leliana’s hands map new journeys across Morrigan’s flesh, her pulse hot and insistent, and Morrigan undresses her in a frenzy of rough hands and clawing nails, raking Leliana’s back when the other woman is too slow to kick off her boots. Morrigan almost apologizes when she sees the red lines on that fair skin, but Leliana laughs, plucking Morrigan’s wrist to kiss her fingertips.

Leliana has lost weight where Morrigan gained it, her belly leaner and her shoulders smaller than Morrigan remembers, a reminder that most of her work these days is spent with reports and daggers than pulling a bow. That same flame-bright hair shows in bright patches beneath her arms and a thin line travelling down her belly until it meets her pubic hair. Morrigan buries her face in the space beneath Leliana’s shoulder, laughing as the hair tickles her cheek, and Leliana folds her arms over Morrigan, pushing her into the bed.

“Selfish, selfish,” Leliana croons, like cajoling a cat. “I have missed you.”

“I take what I want, and it harms none,” Morrigan sniffs, wrapping her legs around Leliana’s thighs, arching her body to meet hers. Leliana tenses her leg, rubbing, and Morrigan groans as it tugs through her pubic hair, an indirect tug that gives nowhere near the stimulation she craves as Leliana rocks into her.

Leliana kisses under her ear, bare whispers of breath that reach Morrigan in tattered fragments of poetry. It takes only a few lines before Morrigan laughs, recognizing the Chant.

“Blasphemy!” She retaliates, digging her fingers into Leliana’s ribs and tickling viciously. “I invited _you_ to bed, not the bride of the Maker!”

Leliana squirms, giggles lacing her words as she writhes away from Morrigan’s attack. “Ah, so now you admit this _was_ an invitation!”

“I admit nothing, sly one! Put your tongue to better use!” Morrigan twists her hand into Leliana’s hair, greedy for Leliana’s sudden-sharp gasp of delight. She pushes Leliana down, down, an insistent shove and an accidental knock of her knee into Leliana’s shoulder as she guides Leliana between her legs. The bed feels too small for the two of them now, Leliana’s feet spilling over the edge, so Morrigan pushes herself onto the pillows.

Leliana kisses her pubic mons, then the crease where her thighs meet. Rubs her nose into the base of Morrigan’s belly, then chuckles. “This would be easier if we put a pillow under your hips, yes?”

“And when have I ever made life easy for you?” Morrigan retorts, already passing a cushion to Leliana. It is such a silly luxury, after their time spent camping on hard ground, making sure to sweep aside rough stones or sticks before laying the bedroll.

(It is silly, but that does not mean Morrigan doesn’t _like_ it.)

“You are a puzzlebox,” Leliana says, plumping the pillow. Morrigan presses her feet flat into the bed, arching her back, and Leliana obligingly slips the cushion under her. “It is one of the things I like about you.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Morrigan replies, with as much dignity as she can muster while Leliana laps against her, a wet slick of tongue over her folds.

Leliana’s wraps an arm around Morrigan’s leg, palm on her belly. Leliana’s hands are pink against Morrigan’s skin, her shoulder warm beneath Morrigan’s knee. She uses broad strokes of her tongue, teasing through the outer folds and occasionally dipping lower to taste Morrigan’s core, as if sipping nectar. Morrigan tugs her hair, pulling her to more firmly circle the clit, and Leliana takes the hint with a harder probe of her tongue, spiraling in on that tiny bud. She nibbles with lip-blunted teeth, eliciting a smothered yelp as Morrigan pushes, pulls, her knees clasping tight about Leliana’s head.

Leliana turns a marvellous shade of cherry before Morrigan relents, relaxing her knees. Leliana repays her kindness with an open-mouthed kiss to Morrigan’s thigh, then diving back into her appointed task.

Morrigan’s breath rasps her throat, her one hand still taut in Leliana’s hair as her other hand grips overhead into her pillow, clutching it as if it might anchor her against Leliana’s tongue. Her body flutters, ripples— her world contracts to limbs and breath, heat, the rattle of her heart and the sweat that sticks her hair to her scalp. Contracts to that warm wash of tongue against her slit and how Leliana uses her thumb to tug her labia, opening her up like a reliquary. Contracts to red warmth, the tension coiling in her belly. Heat and frictionless slick, her body breaking into waves, shattered pieces of a glittering whole—

Morrigan comes, and comes, and does not stop until she is back in herself, the once-lovely pressure of Leliana’s tongue against her clit now a throbbing irritation. She groans, and hoarsely says, “Stop.” She releases Leliana’s hair, hand falling to the side.

Leliana stops, laying one final kiss on Morrigan’s pubic hair before sliding up to kiss her neck. She practically glows, like a candle lit from within, her cheeks ruddy and her hair a red halo. Grinning, she says, “I always knew you were sweet.” She licks her lips, her mouth and chin still gleaming with slickness.

“Flattery.” Morrigan sighs without venom. “I suppose you will want your turn now?”

“So generous an offer should not be refused,” Leliana says primly. She giggles as Morrigan pokes her ribs, squeezing down to catch Morrigan’s hand against her forearm. She kisses Morrigan’s cheek, breath warm with spice and honey. “I have always admired your hands and clever fingers. If you were to embrace me, like so...”

They twist, twine sideways. Morrigan slots her knees behind Leliana’s, nuzzles against the soft fall of Leliana’s hair. They fit like nested spoons, one of Morrigan’s arms beneath Leliana and her hand pinching those soft breasts, the other hand resting soft over Leliana’s mouth as Leliana sucks, swirling her tongue over the pads of Morrigan’s fingers. It tickles something at the base of Morrigan’s spine, some soft mimicry of what Leliana’s clever tongue had been doing just minutes before. She drags her saliva-wet fingers across Leliana’s lower lip, dotting wetness in a trail down Leliana’s neck, sternum. Cushions her palm into Leliana’s belly and works her fingers between Leliana’s legs, a gentle dip into the warm slickness of her channel and then working up, trailing it across her folds like honey. Musky-sweet, and Leliana tastes of salt and leather when Morrigan bites her neck, gnawing red half-moons and crescents into her shoulder. This is passion, the respect of equals unbent by the years spun out in long roads behind them, their fates tangled and entwined in patterns still unfolding— but this is a new thread in their long tapestry, and Morrigan wants to mark this, brand Leliana with teeth and lips and sink herself into her in this coupling, marrow-rich and copper-tinged.

Leliana gasps, groans. Her skin flushes beautifully, pink splotches across her neck and shoulders as she shudders into Morrigan’s hand. Morrigan pinches with an edge of nail, twists the nipple hard, almost cruel, and when Leliana cries orgasm it comes as a shock to the both of them, the echoes still ringing the windows.

“I see it has been a while, then,” Morrigan says drily, bringing her still-damp fingers up to Leliana’s mouth.

Leliana kisses them with a soft moan. “A spymaster must be either celibate or discreet. And discretion relies so much on one’s partner.”

“And you think me some secret-keeper?”

“I think you more likely to turn any impertinent spy into a toad.”

Morrigan sniffs. “I would much rather ice their blood with winter’s grasp.” She cups her hand around Leliana’s breast, squeezing, kneading.

“Winter’s grasp… you mean your very-cold hands?” Leliana burrows into Morrigan with a sigh, hooking her toes over Morrigan’s ankle.

“You were not complaining a few moments ago.”

Leliana chuckles, pressing a kiss to Morrigan’s shoulder. “Oh, I have no complaints. Though is it too soon to ask if you will stay the night? Or are we doomed to be but a memory of sweetness?”

Morrigan’s mouth twists, hibiscus-sour. “I cannot— I should return to Kieran, tonight. I offer him freedom and safety in knowing he is loved.” She squeezes Leliana, forearms crossed tight across the other woman’s sternum, her own heart crushed in sudden howl. “And whatever we are, I will not bring strangers in, expect him to treat them as a new mother or father, and then ask him to forget so easily when we leave.”

“And you are certain you will leave?” Leliana’s words are soft, cool. Like rosewater and prayer, some echo of devotion.

“I am certain.” Morrigan does not allow her voice to break, betrays no useless sentiment. “I make no promises I cannot keep.” Because Morrigan _will_ leave, no matter how she might wish it otherwise. That certainty dwells in her, deep and inexorable as the changing of the seasons. It is but one endless cycle, the year’s slow turn and the way old acquaintances become new lovers and will eventually become old memories, the way her mother forced her into the world and Morrigan returned to slay her, only to later find herself bound once more. Perhaps because all of life is haunted, deeply rooted in its own pains and cursed recollections; as a house is haunted, so is a body. So is a bloodline. So is a seed. They are no less beautiful for it.

Some things are worth preserving.

Morrigan closes her eyes. Breathes in the smell of flowers and Leliana, Leliana and flowers, their bodies pressed warm with sweat cool between them.

Morrigan says, “But I am not leaving yet.”


End file.
